Ethnos

Zulu

The Zulu are an African ethnic group of about 5 million people who live mainly in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. This makes them the most numerous ethnic group in the country. Their language derives from Bantu. Under their king, Shaka, they expanded their kingdom in the early 1800s, from a minor clan of 1500 people to a great nation between the Tugela River and the Pongola River, through conquest and assimilation. They were partly responsible for the Mfecane - the catastrophic forced migration of many clans around Zululand. Famous for their conflicts with Boer settlers and the British army in the 1800s (eg. the Anglo-Zulu War in 1879 where Zulus defeated British troops at Isandlwana on January 22.)

The modern Zulu population is fairly evenly divided into urban and rural groups: Rural Zulu people live in villages, often without electricity and running water, in houses constructed from a mixture of mud brick and more modern, but cheap, materials. The Zulu aristocracy still tends to play a major role in the leadership of rural Zulu people. Local amaKhosi (literally lords, though "chiefs" is a more common translation) tend to hold a certain amount of sway over the people in their area. Some rural Zulu people make a living selling basketry and beadwork to tourists and city dwellers. Some are also subsistence farmers, although a more prominent trend is for one member of a family to get a job in a nearby city, from the income of which they support the rest of the family.

Poorer urban Zulu people live in Townships, which came about as a result of apartheid. However, a large number of Zulu people are now members of the middle class, living in suburban houses, and having fairly common middle class first world jobs. A number of Zulu people are prominent business men and women, and a number are parliamentarians. ***